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From farting fish, to the laws of stupidity, Marc Abrahams (editor and co-founder of The Annals of Improbable Research) has a knack for finding science that "makes you laugh, and then makes you think." Abrahams discusses some improbable research, and why science that might at first seem absurd, matters.

Keith Poole of the University of Georgia, with collaborator Howard Rosenthal of New York University, has spent decades charting the partisan ideological shifts and polarization in Congress from the 18th Century until now to get the view of how the political landscape has changed from 30,000 feet up. What they have found is that the Republican Party is the most conservative it has been a century.

Portugal saw a spike in its death rate this winter, mostly among the elderly. The government blames the rise on a nasty flu strain. But critics say austerity measures are at least partly to blame, the result of higher medical fees and transportation costs.

In a new book, Relics: Travels in Nature's Time Machine, Harvard entomologist and photographer Piotr Naskrecki documents his travels, from New Guinea to New Zealand and beyond, looking for organisms whose genes can tell us something about conditions on Earth millions of years ago.

To get elected in southwestern Pennsylvania as a Democrat, it helps to be a conservative one. And because of congressional reapportionment, two conservative Democratic incumbents — Rep. Jason Altmire and Rep. Mark Critz — are facing off for a single seat in their party's primary later this month.

While composing the songs on his band's latest record, frontman Stephin Merritt felt most inspired with a cocktail in one hand and a pen in the other.

In her new memoir, A Natural Woman, Carol King details the stories behind some of her most famous songs and her relationships with songwriters like James Taylor, Gerry Goffin and Paul Simon. Also, New York Mets pitcher R.A. Dickey talks about being the only knuckleball pitcher in the major leagues.

Agents have been sent home for alleged misconduct, reportedly related to prostitution. President Obama arrived in Colombia Friday for the Summit of the Americas, and the Secret Service says its security plan has not been compromised.

One third of food is wasted worldwide, according to the U.N. Photographer Klaus Pichler gives rotten food the glamour treatment to make that point. But will it make us be more careful about how we buy and use food?

John Edward Simpson was a ship's doctor aboard the Titanic. He wrote a letter to his mother back home in Belfast, a few bits of news and fond wishes. The letter, sent from the great ship's last port of call, made it home. Simpson did not.